


the birth of will: an exercise in agency (and patience)

by Senatsu



Category: Pumpkin Jack (Video Game)
Genre: Domesticity if you squint, Jack uses the F word a lot, M/M, casual co-existing as it were, domestic is relative in the end, sexy things that don't involve sex, shockingly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senatsu/pseuds/Senatsu
Summary: (set after Champion and Pariah)Jack thinks things would get more interesting if the Devil's monsters had a little more... free will. He leaves the fancy-schmancy spellwork to the Wizard, of course.The Wizard is thrilled, of course, because why wouldn't he be.
Relationships: Jack/The Wizard (Pumpkin Jack)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

“You know what’s boring as shit?” says Jack, fiddling idly with a green liquid-filled beaker on one of the Wizard’s many, m a n y tables full of things. 

“What?” says the Wizard, followed promptly by, “Don’t touch that.” 

Jack, as usual, ignores him. He spins the beaker’s bottom tip on his finger, leaving the whole thing upright as it spins, which _should_ be impossible… but it seems as though for Jack, nothing truly is. “All these monsters.” 

The Wizard raised an eyebrow at him, though the eyebrow itself was impossible to see under the shadows of his hat brim, and all that resulted was one glowing yellow eye being slightly wider open than the other. “I thought you enjoyed the monsters, when they weren’t busy attacking you specifically. Actually, I thought you enjoyed that too, albeit you never stop complaining about it.” 

Jack flicked the beaker off his finger. It landed on the desk and exploded. He turned away from the colorful embers and smoking remains of the entire table he’d just destroyed and shrugged. “Sure, the chaos is fun and all. I just think it’s stupid as Hell for them to be _made_ that way, y’know?” 

The Wizard sighed in momentary despair for his ruined experiments, then raised a hand that put out the fires with his magic so at the least they would burn no further. “I’m not certain I follow.” 

Jack lifted a book off a different table and began flipping through it, not reading it at all, but instead systematically plucking out each and every one of the Wizard’s bookmarks that littered the pages. 

The Wizard’s hand twitched at his side. Some days, he really wanted to kill this man--

“So the Devil makes these guys, right? And he makes ‘em real nasty, down to the bone, every single one. And then he just sics the entire bunch on the world and says, now there’s a job well done! And sits back while they destroy everything, lazy asshole. For the rest of forever.” 

The Wizard nodded. Yes, that was a succinct summary of what had happened…

“But he did the Damning in the first place cause he was bored as all fuck, right? So now he’s made a scenario he can never lose, and the same thing is just gonna keep happening over and over again for all eternity at this point. Monsters, all over, being evil every single day and killing any poor sod they can get their hands on because that’s just what they do.” 

The Wizard paused now, tilting his head towards the ceiling to think on this. He was beginning to understand, perhaps, where this was going. “This is true. Are you suggesting, then, that whether the Devil allows eternal peace or whether he lets his minions have power for all time, he loses either way? In his… boredom?” 

Jack dropped the book on the table facedown so that it sprawled with its pages open against the table, some crushed beneath it, and now instead lifted a nearby hand-drawn schematic. “That’s exactly what I’m goddamn saying. I know for a damned _fact_ that old geezer was practically nutting over the idea of you giving him a run for his money with that Amulet, couldn’t wait to see the two of us throw down.” 

The Wizard used a telekinetic power to lift the schematic out of Jack’s hand and into his own, where it would be safe. For the moment. “So what, precisely, would you suggest, o’ wise King of the Pumpkins? That we duel again for the Devil’s pleasure?” 

“Shut up,” said Jack, and then, “No, that’s fucking stupid. I’d just win every time anyway, defeats the purpose." 

The Wizard opened his mouth to protest the indignity of such a statement, but was cut off instantly. 

“I’m just saying… a little monster-y free will would spice things up.” 

The Wizard found himself staring yet again. “Free will? For the Devil’s monsters? How could a mindless creature even begin to make use of a such a thing?” 

“Thought you had a great imagination,” said Jack, voice dry, “so where’s the damn creativity, you walking pile of books? The monsters are stupid, sure, but they ain’t brainless. The Devil’s gonna figure out someday that having every single odd stacked in his own damn favor ain’t how to enjoy a game a long, long time. Course at the rate his guts-and-gore filled skull works, it’ll be at least a few centuries before he’s gotten to that conclusion.” He then snatched the diagram back out of the Wizard’s hand. Before it could be telekinetically retrieved a second time, Jack nonchalantly held it over the open flame of a nearby candle and watched it incinerate. 

The Wizard put a hand to his eyes and massaged them. Jack was clearly in more of a Mood than usual today. “So why are you telling me all this?” he said wearily. 

“Just figured you’d have a solution somewhere in that cobweb-covered little nerd brain of yours.” 

The Wizard’s hand dragged down from his face to his nose, and he stared at Jack over the top of it. “I beg your pardon?” 

“Or if you didn’t have one, you’d make one,” Jack added, levitating casually a foot above the ground, crossing his legs. “Think of it as a new project.” 

“Heaven and Hell know I need one, considering you’ve destroyed at least three of my projects in one sitting,” the Wizard said, staring at the chaos Jack had left in his wake. As usual. “So your brilliant idea is for me to somehow find a way to give all of the Devil’s monsters the option to choose to be… other than what they are.” 

“I knew you’d catch up eventually,” said Jack. He pulled out a pocket watch that he kept on his person for no reason other than to be facetious. “Took you long enough, though.” 

The Wizard stared at a half-wiped away spell diagram on the stone floor, thinking about it. To structurally change not just one monster, or a few, but all of them… now that would take quite some doing. And how to even provide the option for choice in the first place to a creature that already _existed_? It was all too simple to enslave the free will of a living thing, it happened all the time. To do the opposite… that didn’t happen. It simply wasn’t done. 

But there was a first time for everything, no? So the greatest scholars liked to say. 

The Wizard floated over to a stack of books, knocked half of them off the top to clatter to the side - Jack was clearly beginning to rub off on him - and took the book he wanted from the middle, beginning to page through it. 

“Ha. Knew you couldn’t resist,” said Jack then, voice smug. “You’re already thinking about it, aren’t you?” 

Before the Wizard could say something sharp, there was a little _szzzt_ sound like a tiny discharge of lighting, and the sound of Jack going, _“OW! WHAT THE FUCK!”_ in the background. The Wizard smiled to himself, trying not to laugh. He just might have taken not one, but several pages out of Jack’s book, and left a trap or two amongst his in-progress experiments for the pumpkin man to find.

Now, on to the matter of birthing free will…

_Szzzt._

“OW! Huh. This is new. When did you even _make_ this?” _Szzzt._ “Fuck!” 

The Wizard dropped his head into his book and crushed the pages closed against either side of his face. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look guys this is where the sexy not-sex things happen so if you're not into it, scoot on to the next chapter. there's lightning zappy stuff. also this is absolutely NOT dubcon, to be clear - they're both very into it. they both just also never talk about literally anything like grown adults should do. talk about your feelings, folks! and your not-sex.

Jack, it turned out, wasn’t repeatedly zapping himself out of an idiot’s failure to understand why something was hurting him. 

Jack was repeatedly zapping himself because, apparently, he liked it. 

The Wizard did not know what to do with this information. Or rather, he had several ideas come to mind and immediately discarded all of them out of the sheer lunacy of the concepts. Using his magic to _purposely_ fry Jack with bits of lighting because he _knew_ that Jack liked it? Preposterous. And bordering on dangerous things that were entirely uncharted territory for the Wizard which he also fully intended to _keep_ that way. 

Except that then Jack had to go and threaten the integrity of a project which it had taken the Wizard _months_ of time to prepare each step for, a set of processes which the Wizard had absolutely _no desire_ to repeat, and the Wizard suddenly found himself pinning Jack to a wall in some strange throwback to that tree in the Northern territory all that time ago, just before their legendary battle. 

“Do. Not. _Touch that_ ,” the Wizard said through gritted teeth. “I have a _much_ more potent version of the spell you found waiting for you on my desk, and I will not hesitate to use it on you.” 

Jack and the Wizard stared at each other in silence. 

Jack made no move to throw the Wizard off or otherwise get away. “Then do it,” said the pumpkin-headed asshole that the Wizard loved to hate. 

The Wizard inhaled sharply. There wasn’t even the usual addendum of _‘if you can’_ to the demand. Just, very simply: ' _do it_.' Which meant that Jack absolutely wanted him to. A glow suddenly grew in the air next to the both of them as a crackling ball of lightning spawned in the Wizard’s free hand, palm up toward the ceiling. 

The flames that always burned behind Jack’s eyes suddenly seemed to brighten and intensify. 

Perhaps it was anticipation. 

The Wizard pressed the fizzing, popping ball of power he held to the t-shape of where Jack’s arms and torso connected. 

All at once, Jack cursed in a voice that half-cracked along the way and his whole frame, odd amalgamation of wood and stuffing and ropes and gears that it was, spasmed and shuddered under the magical lightning that coursed along it in every direction, unheeding of the laws of nature that ordinarily would have required something more conductive than _wood_ to run along. 

The Wizard jerked his hand back, beads of sweat forming on his shadowed temples. 

Jack relaxed against the wall, his shoulders heaving in a way that might have implied he were breathing heavily, were he a creature that had any _need_ to breathe. (Considering he was a pumpkin on fire, he did not, in fact, need to breathe.) Before the Wizard could say a single word, Jack rasped a demand: “Again.” 

There was a long, heavy silence between them. Then the Wizard brought his hand forward and pressed it again to the coarse, tattered fabric Jack called a shirt. 

A second time the wooden frame he touched convulsed and jerked, just like any human body might under the power of an electric charge; again, the Wizard broke contact after only a moment or two of watching. 

This time, however, Jack said, “No,” and grasped the Wizard’s magic-cradling hand by the wrist, pressing it back to himself. The firelight in his gourd-skull flickered with purple embers amongst the usual red and orange and yellow, embers that sparked and snapped just as the glittering lightning in the Wizard’s palm did. Jack held, and held, and held, allowing the lightning to wreak havoc on his synthetic skeletal structure, writhing this way and that, cursing every other moment, it seemed - yet unwilling to stop. 

The Wizard’s heart hammered all too loudly in his chest. The sweat on his brows spread across the whole of his forehead, the skin above his upper lip, his hands beneath the gloves. He felt he should stop, the sane part of him, the part that had _something_ resembling a conscience in it - but the rest of him demanded that he continue to hold, continue to watch, as the man who had both killed him and given him a second life thrashed between him and the cold stone wall behind them. 

Something inside of the Wizard was awake. Awake, and burning, and _hungry_. 

It rejoiced in the scene before it. 

It reveled in the sounds of that cracked, cursing voice, in the sight of the writhing, in the knowledge that whatever… whatever _this_ was, it was something wrought between them and no one else.

Then, just when he was starting to smell the singed and scorched stench of wood beginning to burn, just when he feared it had all gone too far… Jack again made the gasping sort of sound that should only have belonged to someone with breath in their lungs, convulsed one last time, and sank into a sudden limp state, jerking the Wizard’s crackling hand away from him. 

The Wizard snuffed the spell out immediately and shifted to support Jack’s body with both of his hands. He didn’t bother to ask, “Are you all right?” given that the one time he had bothered to try, Jack had insulted him into the next lunar cycle. He simply stood there, quivering, alarmed, hungry, confused and triumphant, holding his - rival? Enemy? Rage-inducing pumpkin-headed buffoon? - in his hands while Jack remained limp. 

“Fuck,” said Jack at long last, and the Wizard could hardly even begin to deny the relief that coursed through him. “You had that shit this whole time, and you didn’t _tell me_?” 

The Wizard’s eyes became flat across the tops of them in an expression of exasperation he was rapidly becoming used to wearing. “I cannot possibly imagine why it did not occur to me that you would be interested in purposely attempting to incinerate yourself with spell-induced lightning,” he said then, his voice dry and just as flat as his eyes. 

“It’s like you don’t know me,” said Jack, his perma-grin gone a little lopsided in an also-familiar smirk now. 

The Wizard realized abruptly that Jack had not let go of his wrist. He could not decide if this was a good thing or a bad thing, so he elected instead to ignore it. “I would like to keep it that way,” he said in reply. 

“Liar,” said Jack, and he whipped them both around so fast that the Wizard’s golden eyes had scarcely blinked before he found his _own_ shoulder blades, still very human indeed, pinned against the same stone wall that had somehow grown warm from Jack’s presence against it. Perhaps the lightning had more than a little to do with that. 

“What,” said the Wizard, his tone icy enough to hide both his shock and his unfortunate sensation of thrill, “are you doing.” 

“Three hundred years, give or take, without a _human_ body ain’t enough to make me forget the ins and outs of having one,” said Jack, his voice suddenly _heinously_ wicked. 

The Wizard began to fear for his life for the first time since he had actually died. “I’d prefer if you left mine alone.” 

“Double fucking liar,” said Jack. He kept one hand at the Wizard’s chest, and one hand traveled downwards, and the Wizard was so shocked that he didn’t teleport out of reach even once during the next several minutes of _none of your damn business_. 

* * *

“You,” said the Wizard, legitimately panting and wheezing for all he was worth, those several minutes later, “are a villain _and_ a jerk, and I hate you, Jack.” 

“Aw. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, Wiz,” said Jack, taking his own turn to support the now-limp party against the wall. 

The Wizard let his hat and skull tip back against the wall and closed his eyes. He desperately needed a drink. Several drinks. Preferably something other than the kind he made himself into beakers and potion bottles. 

Preferably as soon as possible. 

* * *

The Wizard will eventually develop an unfortunate Pavlovian response to thunderstorms, but that variation of Hell on Earth is a ways off in coming, yet.


	3. Chapter 3

The next several weeks were a flurry of activity: the Wizard doing what he did best (research and study,) Jack doing his best to complain that the Wizard wasn’t doing it fast enough for his taste (while simultaneously getting in his way at every opportunity), and the two of them becoming distracted with sudden bursts of magic and scuffling that had nothing to do with duels. 

At last, one day, in the moments of clarity that usually follow after such ‘scuffling’, the Wizard said from underneath Jack, _“I need a copy of their spell of origin!”_

Jack, his flames still flickering slightly as if in short, repeated gusts of wind, stared blankly down at him. “The Hell are you talking about? Your head hit the floor too hard?” 

The Wizard scowled and flung Jack off him, lifting to his feet and then off the floor in his usual manner of floating. “You set me to work on a little pet project for _you_ and then _you_ forget about it?” he said, throwing a book directly at Jack’s head and taking satisfaction in the _thud_ it made and the loud curse that followed. “I’m talking about the monsters, Jack! I think I’ve just about got all of the knowledge I’d need to make modifications - but I can’t modify _nothing_. I’ve got to have the origination spell that created them.” 

Jack threw the book that had pinged him aside and sat up, rubbing his gourd-skull. “You realize the only one who’s gonna have that is the Unholy One Himself, right?” 

“You realize that this was _your_ idea, right?” the Wizard retorted. “Any other option isn’t going to work the way you want it to, particularly not long-term. If I attempt to simply cast a spell of my own on all existing monsters, not only will that require an absolutely massive amount of power that I’m not even certain I could _find_ , attempting to layer one separate spell onto another and at such widespread range, but it would only affect the monsters that are currently present in the world. And you know as well as I do that more spring up from the ground all the time to replace the ones the humans destroy.” 

He rummaged around on a high shelf and took down one book, then another from further along, carrying them both down to a table and setting them there to lay them open. “But if I can read and use the spell of origin directly… I can install modifications directly _into_ the spell. All I’d need then do is enact the modified spell, and it would retroactively change every monster ever born of its magic, in addition to changing every monster yet to be born.” 

“Most of that sounded like hot garbage,” said Jack, “but what you’re saying is I need to go swipe the Big Bastard in Charge’s spellbook and bring it back or some shit, right?” 

The Wizard eyed Jack. “...that is indeed what I’m saying. Though perhaps it would be more effective if you simply explained your intentions to him, given you intend the effects to be to his benefit. If you steal something that belongs to him, you could end up in dire straits all over again. Or at least bodiless.” He sighed. “If only you had kept the Amulet instead of destroying it.”

Jack snorted. “It’s like I keep telling you - if you keep all the odds stacked in your own favor, it’s boring as _shit._ Flying around with god-powers was fun for like two seconds before it got old. Anyway, he’d have to catch me in the act first,” said the pumpkin, and he punched one straw-stuffed hand into the palm of the other, “and there’s a reason the sly old coot made a deal with _me_ to kick your ass instead of doing it himself.” 

“I had always wondered about that,” the Wizard remarked in return. He paused. “Even so… I prefer you with a body. You’re easier to deal with this way, I think. I shudder to imagine what you’d be like as a formless ghost haunting me. So do be careful, Jack.” 

“You say that like I’m not!” said Jack, his voice wicked and amused. “I’ll be fine, so calm your magic tits already, huh?” 

The Wizard pinched the bridge of his nose. “My magical tits are perfectly calm,” he said, voice frigid, “so get out of here before I spawn an anvil in mid-air just to crush you with it.” 

The sound of laughter echoing out of a carved-pumpkin shell filled the air behind him, and then, “Hey! Birdbrain! I know you’re right outside that damn window! Get in here, we’ve got places to go!” 

The Wizard turned to the sight of black feathers floating about as the Crow in question fluttered onto the sill, hopping anxiously from one foot to the other. “What do you need _me_ for,” it complained in that sandpapery, squawking little voice. Even so, the Wizard got the distinct impression it wasn’t entirely _unhappy_ to be called.

“Shut up,” said Jack, “and get on. You’re so damn ungrateful for a bird I promised to do eternal scarecrow pest control for, you know that?” 

The Crow hop-fluttered from the sill to Jack’s shoulder and fluffed itself out there, looking like it felt more than at home on the rough-canvas shirt that its claws now dug into. “Every time you want _help_ ,” it squawked this time, “I end up getting nearly fried! Or eaten! Or with my poor crow skull almost bashed in!” 

“So?” said Jack. “You make it out every time, don’t you? Cripes. Your father musta been part-chicken.” 

The Crow let out an indignant little shriek and pecked at the side of Jack’s head. 

Jack flicked its beak, then, though not nearly enough to hurt it, and his voice was affectionate this time. “Anyway, you’re my good luck charm. Not that a legend like me needs any luck. So shut the fuck up and let’s go!” 

The Wizard turned to his books now and crumpled the edge of a page in one hand. Considering that the emotion churning his gut right at this very moment felt all too much like _jealousy_ over a _crow_ , he was seriously beginning to consider the pros and cons of a self-performed lobotomy. However, the consideration was short-lived, interrupted by again thinking of Jack entering the Devil’s territory in pursuit of an object the Devil would surely wish no living being to have. He turned his eyes to a half-open chest in the corner of the room, so full of odds and ends that it no longer _could_ close all the way. 

He floated over to it, flipped the lid open entirely, and sifted through til he found what he was looking for: it was similar in nature to the Amulet Jack had toyed with and then permanently destroyed, though this magical little object glowed a soft blue hue instead of the Amulet’s shimmering violet light. He took the glowing thing over to Jack and held it out. “Take this with you.”

Jack eyed it suspiciously. “What is that? A new weapon?” 

The Wizard’s voice was wry. “Not exactly. If you shatter this, it will summon me directly to wherever you are.”

Jack’s permanently glaring eyes seemed to frown for a moment. “Why the Hell do you have a necklace that summons _you_ sitting around in your own damn tower?”

The Wizard’s hat dipped forward low enough that his eyes were hidden from Jack’s view completely. “Let us just say that the one intended to receive this gift back in the days when I had created it… proved to be unworthy of its use.” 

There was a silence as Jack processed the ‘between the lines’ segment of the answer. “Well, whoever that fucker was, hope they’re dead now,” he said then, not exactly sympathy, but close enough as far as Jack was concerned, anyway. 

“They are,” said the Wizard, with some half-satisfaction. His hat lifted again. “In any case… self-sufficient monster that you are, I know this is likely a redundant sort of gift. But I prefer to prepare for futures that will never occur than to walk unprepared into an unexpected situation.” 

Jack looked like he might want to reject the thing, maybe even throw it into the Wizard’s face - but he didn’t do that, and instead hung it around his neck where the Amulet had once hung, months ago now. “If it’ll let you sleep at night, whatever,” he said. 

The Crow eyed the necklace from Jack’s shoulder with a dubious expression. It pecked a few times at the thing, causing the Wizard to startle and extend a hand forward. “Don’t break it _now_!” he said crossly, a tiny burst of air rushing out of his hand that nearly knocked the bird off balance from Jack. 

Jack burst out laughing all over again. “Serves you right, featherhead,” he said, and then he raised his hand in parting gesture. “Later, Wiz! I’ve got a Devil to raid.” He seemed much cheerier at the prospect of an adventure _he’d_ dreamed up himself than one the Devil had sent him on. 

The Wizard dipped his head in return of the parting gesture. 

Moments later, the room was empty but for the Wizard, Jack having jumped out the same window he’d summoned the Crow from. The Wizard floated over to the window and stared out of it as the pumpkin man leapt from stone to wooden lamp post to ledge, all the way down the side of the tower and off into the wilds beyond. 

“It isn’t as though there’s a door at the foot of a set of simple _stairs_ or anything of the sort,” the Wizard muttered. “Of _course_ it makes sense to leave and enter through the window!” 

Yet some part of him knew the muttering was a mere disguise for the shiver of worry his shriveled old heart was feeling at the quest that he’d just sent Jack on…


End file.
